It's the Mafia AU
by GraceEliz
Summary: Don Wayne controls Gotham. He runs the underground, is considered royalty, is said to have a child in each area and aspect of society. Don Wayne cannot possibly control the flying hunters of the city. The Bat and the Birds fly free - hunt free.


Dick – Raven, blue-black suit (one of the most acrobatic birds) . Bat for a year, when Bruce presumed dead.

Jason – Crow, black and grey accents (he never forgets). Was Merlin, grey and steel blue.

Tim – Peregrine, dark steely blue with black accents (fastest bird)

Damian – Saker, whitish grey with gold/unber accents (Arabian falcon, fast and agile)

Steph – Harrier, brown-black with gold/umber highlights (common in North America, used in hunting)

Cass – Bat, was Hobby (because both fast and agile)

Bruce – was Bat, now Gyrfalcon (largest hunting bird) when in field (rarely), white suit with dark speckles.

"Timothy Jackson Wayne, at your service."

Bruce allowed a smirk to crawl up the sharp angles of his face. His sons had done well this last mission, remaining in deep cover in Blüdhaven to assess the situation in their sister city before Dick moved there. Tim especially brought a degree of respect and fear to the family name with his renowned intelligence – and of course, he was utterly ruthless. Ruthlessness was the name of the game in Bruce's lifestyle of choice. Leaning back in his chair as Tim stripped out of his server's uniform he commented, "Your disguises get more complex every mission, my son." Tim smiled as he twisted around to reach the back of the bandage wrapped around his waist, rolling his eyes as Bruce frowned at the grimy marks.

"Calm down, Dad," drawled Tim, "This is the injury from last month's shootout down the Narrows." The bandage peeled away from pale skin hashed with scars and dried blood with a slight rasping sound. He scowled, as if the red wound was no more than a mild scratch and not like it had almost killed him off for good. "Tore my stitches."

Bruce stepped back around his desk and leant down to look it over. "Hop onto the desk, I'll clean it for you," he said. The cabinet in the corner was stocked with various food and enough quality medical supplies to fill the clinic for a week, so grabbing a handful of bandages and a bottle of disinfectant took less than a minute. Tim leant back on his hands as he studied his father – his keen eyes saw the twinge of the knee, the tension down the spine, the tight hold of the left shoulder. His father was hiding injuries.

"What happened to your knee?"

"Just the weather."

"Bull. Shit," hissed Tim with unexpected vehemence. Bruce paused in threading the needle with antiseptic twine, treating Tim to a burst of all too familiar worry. "You're hurt." Tim leant forward, watching his dad's face. Bruce met his eye, matching the intensity of his gaze. The silence stretched out like an elastic ready to snap, a bubble of expectation, the knowledge that one person won't admit to what the other already knows. Eventually Bruce's injuries would get too bad to hide and someone would think an assassination attempt was a good idea, or he'd incapacitate himself, and Bat would be roaming the streets hungering for blood. Crow and Raven wouldn't be back for another few hours – Falcone had built himself into a threat in Blüd, and needed taught a lesson in humility – but once they were, they'd be baying for revenge. In Crow's eyes, someone always had to pay for their father's pain. Tim had to challenge it now, before the rest of the family worked it out.

"I'll re-stitch. Then we'll go find your sister. Saker and Bat should back from patrol," said Bruce. No weakness, never that, but a kindness no-one could anticipate and love that had burned cities. Tim nodded slowly. Cass would sort him out.

Crashing echoed up the stair into the room. Tim had a blade in his hand before his father had leapt up and palmed his knives, and the softness was made harsh in the racket invading the early morning grey.

"Pop! Ey, lemme in. I'm for Pop Wayne," growled Jason. The door sprang open as he kicked it, arms full of Dick – still as the blue-black Raven who had started to hunt in Blüd – and blood marking his black and grey suit. Bruce dropped his blades in shock as Jason carefully lay Dick on the rug. "He's hurt only a bit," said Jason looking up at Bruce, "but Pop, I think he's a concussion." The thud of Bruce's knees on the floor was Tim's prompt to get the emergency medkit from the same cabinet in the corner. "We stopped down the Narrows, got jumped by some big thugs. Said they owed us pain," continued Jason as Bruce looked carefully over his eldest's head, "then one of them got Dick over the head with a cricket bat."

"You can't go in the field, Dad. Your knee-"

"Tim," warned Bruce. Jason stared incredulously at Tim, too annoyed to say anything for at least a minute. "You hurt your knee again?" he demanded, "Pop you swore down you'd be better to yourself." Out of all of the kids, Jason was the angriest when Bruce was hurt. That's not to say the others didn't get angry – Dick was always mad at someone – but where Cass was only a little more violent, Jason would dance along his own boundaries between killing for justice and torturing for sadistic revenge in imitation of their father, a line Bruce had warned them all away from. Dick groaned, distracting Bruce from his second son's challenge and disappointment. He crooned a lullaby, stroking the raven-dark hair, smiling gently as Dick slurred something in a language Tim couldn't quite place and tried to focus on Bruce.

Jason heaved a sigh. "Give me him," he suggested, "and I'll carry him to the car." Reattaching masks took only a moment, so they were heading down the stairs of the Den within five minutes. Tim dozed as he listened to Bruce and Jason plan out who went where once home. They'd get Dick's head sorted, put Damian to bed, then Cass, Jason and Tim were going to sit down with Bruce and talk about his injuries. That would be fun. Still, being Don Wayne didn't require vigilante fieldwork. Just being Brucie to the press and Pop to the gang.

Later, in the comfort of the Manor – a safe place, despite everyone knowing Don Wayne lived there – Tim listened to Damian rant in Arabic about the "upstart young rabble challenging our father". He understood perhaps two words in ten, but Dick had told him back in the days they thought their father dead (Tim had known, he had told them, but nobody believed him) that he had to listen to Damian even when Damian couldn't use his words in English. He hung his suit up – his saker mask still on, despite the house rule of no masks – without breaking his stream of speech. The mask was set gently, ever so gently, onto the stand constructed for it. He finally ran out of breath, letting his head tip onto the glass front of the wardrobe. They ran down the hall, a nook holding a suit with a glass front like those in a museum or stereotypical lair. The last one had no light: Bruce's old Bat suit, from the early years up to just after Tim joined the family and Cass took the mantle. Tim sighed, "Let's go up to Dad and Cass."

They had carved this life out of the ash and rubble of the city their father had scorched in his fury and now they hunted those who wronged them from above, the only aerial predators. Some people called them the Flock, others the Hawks. The masks were a work of art, designed to terrifying beauty, the beauty of nature's fastest predators, as realistic as possible. In several of the rich families of Gotham, be they socialite or mafia, coming of age ceremonies saw the awarding of family crests on rings or the passing of keys or canes or ornaments. For the Waynes, coming of age meant the reveal of your mask. As children, still under the nameless black suit affectionately referred to as chick, watching Bruce and Dick and Jason fly roof-to-roof and swoop on their prey inspired dreams of personalised hunting suits.

As the empire grew from Bruce's subtle charming domination of the upper echelons of society into the citywide reign he held now, Tim had followed in his idols' footsteps. He dropped hints at galas of Bruce's generosity and kindness, tracked the streets and documented the kills, recorded the slow but sure infiltration of the local mafia. Bruce had caught him when he was filing a report, looming into his bedroom in silence that had stretched and stretched and culminated in the silent offer of the black children's mask. Tim had never looked back, until Damian tried to throw him out when Bruce was 'dead'.

"No! Hurting! You stay. I go, with Jason. Not you," shouted Cass from the library, whose doors stood open. Damian glanced wode-eyed at Tim, and that shared glance conveyed 'we should probably be in there for this but equally Bruce will clam up'. Tim sighed, then turned and headed up the stairs with his only younger brother right behind him – they could check over this weeks protection rackets maybe. Something nice and boring to send them to sleep with numbers in their minds instead of Bruce's hidden pains.

Cass was shaking with fury. Silhouetted against the roaring library fire, she was an avenging fury, an incarnation of the night sent to set mortal men on the right path. For a moment her strength and beauty struck Bruce speechless – was she really the little girl he'd nurtured and loved, carried in his arms for days at a time? He had built an empire on the influence the Waynes already possessed, supplemented it with the Bat's ruthlessness. As Don Wayne he showed no mercy: his only rule that no death came from his hand. Don Wayne was known for torture. Pop Wayne, however, was known for his sharp mind and limitless love for his children. Cass' posture drooped. "Dada," she said, "please. Care – for you." She dropped to kneel at his feet, looking beseechingly up into his soul, hands resting on his knees. "Be Pop Wayne, rule Gotham. Let us be control."

"I don't know if I can," Bruce breathed, "This city is so much of me." Jason stepped forward and crouched to his right, his second son, his rock, the prodigal. He pressed his lips as he reached and wiped the tear from Bruce's cheek.

"Pop, you know we love you. You don't have to suffer all pain to prove it," choked Jason, "Just – stop it. Run the mob. I've done it before, I'll second, but you need stop all this." Cass leant into his side, lending her strength. "This gig – it's good. You've made Gotham so much better than it was when we were little, everyone knows. The Waynes, the masks, we are what this city knows as justice. Can't that be enough, for you to keep that up?"

Unable to resist two sets of pleading eyes, Bruce slid forward onto the ground, cradling them as close as possible. Two of his beautiful, impossible children, who'd dragged him out of the pit of himself before and would again. He nodded. "Okay," he whispered, "okay."

_For the prompt "mafia/mob" on our discord weekly prompts. This fic is a standalone, but the codenames may be reused in the future. It is possible I will write more for this, if the subject comes up or I get people demanding more. I have so many Wips. _


End file.
